Multiyear study examines the teaching performance of teachers trained in the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Duplin County, North Carolina, professional development school (PDS) compared with teachers trained in a traditional teacher preparation program at the same university. Finds teachers trained in the PDS had higher overall…

Study of the conditions that led 32 California school districts to become Challenge Districts, a California Department of Education standards-based, accountability-driven school reform initiative to improve student learning. Finds, for example, that districts chose to become Challenge Districts because they were already working on elements of the…

Discusses the importance of communicating the results of state investment in academic research to multiple audiences. Analyzes doctoral and master's degree research investment in Indiana universities. Compares Indiana research investment with four other states: Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina. (Contains 10 references.) (PKP)

Provides background information on school funding issues in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Examines the "adequacy-based" funding formulas, either proposed or implemented, in these three states. Discusses the operational definition of adequacy in the three states utilized. Explores the similarities and differences among the adequacy…

Examines how 18 school principals and assistant principals from 4 midsized school districts understood the meaning of inclusion and what processes (restructuring or reculturing) they would use to implement inclusion in their schools. Concludes that principals' inclusion implementation strategy focuses on school restructuring rather than…

Defines the basic terms of system, systems, systematic, and systemic and then uses these terms to build an alphabetical glossary categorizing and defining words or phrases applied to systems thinking. (Contains 20 references.) (PKP)

Review of literature on school leadership organized for the most part around the following topics: Building leadership capacity (organizational, managerial coordination, mentoring, collaborative, democratic, ethical, expanded view of schooling); redefining school leadership, for example, by fostering teacher development; and reforming principal…

The second in three-part series on how the principals in 10 low-performing/high-poverty schools met the challenge of Florida's 1999 high-stakes testing and accountability initiative. Examines the challenges principals faced in trying to build organizational capacity from three perspectives: principals' beliefs and values, "it takes a whole…

More people live for weekends and vacations than for the daily work of chosen careers. When students work, they more easily understand that learning adds value to life. Formal schooling must become a time for exploring, experimenting, and constructing a direction for their future lives. (MLH)

As a policy pronouncement, California's Proposition 227 mandates a duty of care that educators owe their students. Failure to teach primarily in English creates a private cause of action against an educator that overcomes legal and policy concerns of "Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District." (Contains 57 notes and references.)

Builds on Duncan Waite's supervisory mission (improving the total teaching/learning situation) by focusing on the dyadic interaction between positively oriented supervisors and the teachers they supervise. Action dimensions vital to accomplishing change include power/dependence relationships, social influences, and effective communicator styles.…

The future of educational design, development, and improvement lies in integrating "how" with "what" and "why." Critical strategic thinking factors include abandoning comfort zones; focusing on ends, not means; linking all three planning and result levels; starting with an ideal vision; preparing measurable…

As for every aspect of Canadian life, duality of origins has defined and shaped education. French Catholic religious personnel created an elementary education system for fur traders, farmers, and native peoples; elites had a privately funded system. English Protestants oriented their systems toward extraction industries and trade. (Contains 41…

Special education's progress was shaped by establishment of the Cuyahoga County Ohio Council for the Retarded Child (1933); the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954); "Sacramento City Unified School District v. Rachel H." (1994); coinage of "learning disabilities"…

During the first 10 years of reforms, New Zealand schools had two kinds of inspections: assurance (compliance) audits and effectiveness reviews to measure academic performance and contributing factors. In 1998, accountability reviews were introduced to judge whether schools were satisfying their charter (contract) objectives. The program is…